4.1 The Body as the Matter of Costume: A Phenomenological Practice (original) (raw)
Related papers
Emotion and Memory; clothing the body as performance
‘Presence and Absence: The Performing Body’
Bugg J. ‘Emotion and Memory; Clothing the Body as Performance’, Adele Anderson and Sofia Pantouvaki (eds.), Presence and Absence: The Performing Body. Oxford: Interdisciplinary press, 2014, pp.29-52 Abstract This chapter focuses on clothing as performance and scenography and the presence and role of clothing and costume design in performance. I explore through my practice as a designer, the clothed body as a site for production of meaning, narrative, performance and communication in an interdisciplinary setting. The intention is to expose the role of costume and clothing design as a generator of performance and meaning through design by drawing on embodied experience, memory, sensory interaction, emotional and physical triggers in garment design as a generator of embodied communication. The design within this research draws on oral histories of dress and seeks to engage viewers and wearers on an emotional and experiential level by connecting to cognitive understanding and memory. This work builds upon aspects of my completed doctoral research which identified that the intersections of subject disciplines are increasingly complex and new interdisciplinary ways of working have emerged that focus on the body and clothing, challenging preconceptions, traditional approaches and subject definitions. I argue that as performance and experimental fashion practice both increasingly move into new and site-specific contexts and as focus is extended around the role of the performer, audience reception, conceptual and experimental approaches, the divisions between clothing designed as conceptual fashion and clothing designed as costume for performance have become less defined. I suggest that it is the shared use of clothing and the performing body to communicate meaning that has enabled a hybrid practice to emerge between fashion and performance. I place emphasis on clothing the body as a visual and physical communication strategy and in relation to research in the fields of performance, costume design, fashion design and fashion communication. I suggest that by focusing on the body as the site for production of meaning and performance, clothing can be not only present in the production process of performance, but also can become a generator of performance and communication through design. By focusing on costume and clothing as a form of narrative and scenography, I have been able to take into account how the emotional and physical factors as well as the site of the body itself contributes to the making, intention and reading of work in the context of hybrid fashion, clothing and performance practice within a contemporary context.
Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Methods
Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Methods, 2021
Even though costume has been dressing the performing body since the ancient world, methods for its analysis are yet to be fully explored. Performance Costume draws on the experience of internationally renowned academic researchers and hands-on theatre, film and experimental performance practitioners to set out an alternative vision for exploring costume across time and place. From the actress on the Victorian stage to design for high quality contemporary TV, this text opens up a new awareness and dignity for costume to be considered in and on its own terms. Recent research has connected the study of costume with theories of the body and embodiment, design practices and artistic and other forms of collaboration in vital new ways; like fashion and dress, costume is now viewed as an area of dynamic social significance and not simply as a passive reflector of a preconceived social state or practice. Offering new approaches to research on costume, and exploring a wide variety of cultures, settings and performance contexts, Performance Costume reveals fresh insights into the better-known frames of historical, theoretical, practice-based and archival research into costume for performance, and considers it as an active agent for performance-making and a material embodiment of ideas shaped through collaborative creative work. A genuinely groundbreaking expansion of the field of costume studies, this is an invaluable text for students and researchers of costume, performance, theatre and film studies and design.
Alarming the Heart: Costume as performative body-object-event
The word ‘costume’, like ‘design’, connotes both artefact (noun) and action (verb), highlighting costume design as an active practice and activating object, capable of dynamically intervening between the body and space. This article looks to the affective and effective impact elicited by highly performative quotidian garments outside the theatre and how, linked to ancient mythology, human history and current sociopolitical events, they have been critically adopted for live performance. Focusing on the universally beguiling red dress, referred to by Anaïs Nin as capable of ‘alarming the heart with the violent gong of catastrophe’, the costume is discussed as a spatial body-object, disrupting and charging social environments to reveal their ‘evental’ nature: calling up monumental moments, productive aesthetic encounters and multiple daily experiences. This reiterates the complexity of our contemporary condition, in which we cannot separate the theatrical from the sociopolitical: something Jon McKenzie maintains could be understood through the critical tool of ‘performance design’ – a constructive means of drawing upon and critiquing the proliferation of manifold events played out in the new century. Referencing my own research-informed practice (created and often articulated in collaboration with choreographer/dancer, Carol Brown), this article will theorize costumes as spatial body-objects as well as active and activating agents that are integral to complex spatiotemporal webs, particularly in relation to our highly mediated reality.
From Critical Costume 2015 to Studies in Costume and Performance
The first issue of "Studies in Costume and Performance" draws materials from Critical Costume 2015, a significant international costume-based event that took place at Aalto University, Helsinki, in March 2015. [...] Critical Costume 2015 was a three-day event consisting of an academic conference that included presentations of theoretical approaches and practice-as-research, as well as an exhibition of costume art, costume design and costume research. [...] Critical Costume 2015 was a significant feedback event for the ‘Costume Methodologies’ project, allowing to map the field of costume research by identifying areas of research interests, research approaches and individuals involved in costume research at an international level. [...] The content of this issue evidences the diversity of approaches in conceptualizing costume. This is seen in both the variety of topics presented and the fields of practice they represent (film, theatre, dance, television and popular culture), as well as in the background of the authors. It is also reflected in the formats of writing, namely articles, visual essays, reflections and reviews. In addition to new research, critical reflections and reviews bear testimony to the event itself, along with a number of reviews of other costume-related events from the international field in the year 2015.
Towards a Philosophy of Costume
Despite Elizabeth Goepp’s (1928) statement – which she made almost 90 years ago – the philosophical and scholarly attention that costume deserves, albeit finally emerging as a vibrant area of research, is still in the early stages of development, particularly if compared to more established fields such as architecture or drama. Even the title of the field has suffered from a lack of clarity, something that Goepp draws attention to. [...] Past and current practice is considered through the reading of the costumed body as a communication of embodied, cultural, social, artistic and historical narratives. As such, this journal is an articulation of practice on a conceptual, theoretical and philosophical level, responding to the call that Elizabeth Goepp addressed almost one century ago. Through this process, we hope that "Studies in Costume and Performance" will contribute to redefining the practice of costume itself.
4.3 'Aware-Wearing': A Somatic Costume Design Methodology for Performance
Close your eyes. Can you sense your clothing touching you? And that you are touching your clothing? This chapter will address and define the importance of 'Aware-Wearing', a somatic act developed by the author in collaboration with the costume designers and visual artists Sandra Arroniz Lacunza and Carolina Rieckhof. It is proposed here as a significant research methodology for costume design and costume-based performance practices. The central aspects of 'aware-wearing' include dressing and undressing, walking, the sense of touch, the role of the performer-spectator and the materiality of both bodies and costumes. Based on examples derived from my ongoing somatic and interdisciplinary artistic research entitled the Somatic Movement, Costume & Performance Project, I focus on how one particular 'Somatic Costume TM ', the 'Furry Heart Protector' (2015-18) evolved through three interrelated creative stages: design, workshop and performance. These stages are non-linear and cyclical. They work with the somatic-based methods described here to 'inhabit' the costume, with the aim of focusing on how the experience of costume effects and 'affects' bodies (affective being a philosophical term not simply equivalent to emotions). The aim is to further speculate on how we write about, design and perform costume as a 'wearer' opposed to as a 'viewer' , inviting scholars, practitioners and spectators to become active participants in a live multi-sensorial costume experience. There is little research into costume designers' and scholars' experiences and perceptions of costume while wearing it. 'While dress cannot be understood without reference to the body and while the body has always and everywhere to be dressed, there has been a surprising lack of concrete analysis of the relationship between them' (Entwistle 2000: 324). The act of consciously wearing is a practice of embodiment-and a return to the emphatic relationship between costume and the body. Embodiment is noted here as 'the act of incorporating and bringing visible expression to, the materiality of lived experience' (Dean and Nathanielsz 2017: 180). Body and costume move each other in metaphorical and literal manners. The multi-sensorial, intersubjective act of wearing allows subjects to increase their experience and understanding of their bodies, costume and environment as well as the interrelationships between the three zones. Wearing becomes the bridge to knowing
Debating critical costume: negotiating ideologies of appearance, performance and disciplinarity
Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2019
In this article, I present an argument for a proposed focus of ‘critical costume’. Critical Costume, as a research platform, was founded in 2013 to promote new debate and scholarship on the status of costume in contemporary art and culture. We have now hosted two biennial conferences and exhibitions (Edge Hill University 2013, Aalto University 2015). These events have exposed an international appetite for a renewed look at how costume is studied, practised and theorized. Significantly, Critical Costume is focused on an inclusive remit that is interdisciplinary and supports a range of ‘voices’: from theatre and anthropology scholars to working artists. In that regard, I offer an initial argument for how we might collectively navigate this interdisciplinary field of practice with reference to other self-identified critical approaches to art and design. By focusing on an interdisciplinary perspective on costume, my intention is to invite new readings and connections between popular practices, such as Halloween and cosplay, with the refined crafts of theatrical and film professionals. I argue that costume is a vital element of performance practice – as well as an extra-daily component of our social lives – that affords distinct methods for critiquing how appearance is sustained, disciplined and regulated. I conclude by offering a position on the provocation of critical costume and a word of caution on the argument for disciplinarity.
Critical Costume 2015: New Costume Practices and Performances
2015
Critical Costume 2015: New Costume Practices and Performances Critical Costume 2015 presents contemporary costume practices and performances by thirty two artists-researchers from three continents and various artistic backgrounds. The works examine the performative qualities of material and form - whether physical, digital or virtual - and stimulate the audience’s thinking to reconsider the role of costume in contemporary performance by proposing new modes of representation as well as new artistic processes. Moreover, the selected works explore how the scenographic body is constructed on a spatial, temporal and conceptual level through body manipulation, material exploration, embodied design and its interpretation.
2024
With the times' progress and the growth of culture and art, the clothing industry has ushered in new development opportunities in the market. As its expansion and extension, clothing performance not only has high ornamental value, but also can exist independently as an art. However, in shaping the artistic image of clothing performance, the main focus is on the presentation of external images, lacking the expression of the rhythmic and connotative characteristics of body movements, which not only weakens the visual effect of the performance, but also has an impact on its integrity and continuity. Therefore, understanding the relationship between clothing performance and the body, and promoting their mutual integration and penetration are of great value and significance for the current development of visual art. Body philosophy is a philosophical discipline that explores the body and bodily experiences. It is concerned with the way the body perceives and exists. This can help performers and designers think about how clothing shapes and expresses personal and social identity, and how the diversity and change of identity can be explored through costume performance. In order to deeply study the relationship between clothing performance and body, and improve the effectiveness of clothing performance, this article explains the relationship between body and aesthetics based on the development history, function and value of clothing performance, combined with body philosophy theory. From the perspective of body philosophy, the body is an indispensable factor in costume performance, and costume performance can achieve artistic expression of the body, both of which interact and promote each other. In the development of aesthetic activities, the connection of the two closely has important value for achieving higher levels of visual representation.